And now for the good news!

We have just managed to pay 10% off our mortgage!

This time last year we owed the building society £105,000.00

We then remortgaged in September 2007 for £85,000.00 paying off £20,000.00

This time we scraped together £8,500.00 (the 10% allowed in 1 year) and now we owe £76,500

Slowly but surely it is coming down!! It was very scary using up our savings, there are so many other things that the money could be used for but we decided to follow our goal which is to be financially free by retirement.

Now it is back to building up the savings again! We have to find the next 10% £7,650 by next August. We have learned that every little helps even the 20p saved by not buying that second hand book and getting it from the library instead. What with increasing food and fuel prices and an extra mouth to feed this won't be easy but I'm not giving up now! What we are doing is to put money we would definately have spent before straight into savings so if we would have found the money to eat out before but instead I cook then we take off the cost of the ingredients and save the difference, if we go to the market for the 3 books for £5 offer but then decide to go to the library instead then that is £5 saved. In the last 2 days we have saved £15.20 towards our goal.